Umineko is a Letdown

Big spoilers! (duh)

I wanted to love Umineko. I really did. In fact, before I even read Higurashi (which you SHOULD read first), everyone I knew expected me to love Umineko the most.

Let's being by saying that the early arcs lay the groundwork for what feels like a masterclass in mystery and psychological storytelling. But by the time you get to the final arcs it all falls apart. And not in some profound, life-changing, interpretive way. No, Umineko collapses under the weight of its own refusal to commit to meaning.

The great premise

The first few arcs are a genuinely fantastic mystery novel. It plays with genre tropes: locked rooms, unreliable narrators, psychological horror, etc. Albeit a huge hater of it by the end, the red truth mechanic was really interesting at that point. And everything is accompanied by an amazing OST that I still listen to almost every day.

However, by arcs 5 or 6 the story starts walking in circles. It starts contradicting itself, and by the time it reaches arcs 7-8, Umineko stops being a mystery novel. It never resolves. It simply sidesteps the whole premise as if it was never there.

Mystery requires rules. Drama requires consequence. Umineko decides it doesn't owe you either.

Pretentiousness = Depth

Yes, I get it. The whole point is that truth is subjective, stories are malleable, and “the heart” is what matters. But that doesn't justify Umineko's total abandonment of narrative responsibility. It tries to be a commentary on fiction itself, but forgets that even metafiction needs a foundation.

You can't deconstruct something that was never properly constructed in the first place. When you've built your entire story on misdirection and ambiguity, pulling the rug out at the end doesn't blow minds, it just pisses people off.

And the people who defend this by saying “you just didn't understand it” are missing the point. I do understand what Ryukishi was trying to do. I just think he failed at it.

The elephant in the room

The buildup in arcs 1 to 6 is fake. That's not to say the events didn't happen in-universe (we'll never know!), but rather that they're constructed without a foundation. Characters are given emotional beats, motivations, traumas… and then nothing. We never truly get to know them. We don't understand what drives them. We're shown versions, layers, and masks, but never a core. It becomes increasingly obvious that Ryukishi was more interested in the idea of ambiguity than in actually telling a story with emotional coherence.

And sure, die-hard fans (AKA underage Twitter users currently reading episode 2 that got spoiled on purpose) will say, “That's the point! You're supposed to interpret it! It's about truth and fiction!” But here's the thing: there's a difference between leaving space for interpretation and failing to define your characters. When a story deliberately withholds so much that its own central cast become unknowable, it stops being deep. It becomes hollow.

A mystery where the pieces don't fit is not a puzzle, it's noise. And Umineko is full of noise pretending to be brilliance.

I dedicate this tale to... my beloved witch Beatrice?

The other thing that infuriates me the most is the main relationship of this story. If you've read Umineko, you've heard it before: “It's a tragic love story.” “Beatrice and Battler are two souls trapped in a dance of truth and illusion.” That sounds poetic until you actually think about what's happening.

There are two things to break down here:

First of all, the relationship itself is not just dysfunctional. It's fake. Literally.

The Beatrice we see in the game board does not exist. She's a construct. The real Beatrice (the one from the portrait) is long dead. What we have instead is a mentally ill maid who has made up her identity so deeply that she no longer lives in reality.

Meta-Battler is not real either. It's just a construct created so Meta-Beatrice wouldn't be alone. Therefore, what we have is a relationship between two fake characters.

Now that we understand that the very foundation of this "relationship" makes no sense, we can tackle the real problem:

Let's assume the 'real-world' Battler and Yasu have a genuine conversation, confronting her identity issues and her plan to murder the entire family. It doesn't matter which version you pick (fake or real) because in the end, Battler survives and puts the nail in the coffin.

By the end of the novel, Yasu kills herself in a very "romantic" scene so she will be remembered as Beatrice. And then Battler, her true love, accepts her delusions and brings us the most gut-wrenching finale ever: he embraces one of Yasu's personalities and then dedicates the story to "Beatrice".

Why would Ryukishi romanticize such a toxic relationship? Why would Battler enable Yasu's delusions? That isn't love. It's neglect and cowardice.

Even in the end, Battler is talking to a fantasy version of Yasu. A “witch” persona she built to escape from pain. He dedicates a story not to a person, but to a symbol. It's poetic, sure, but it's also damning: even in his goodbye, he's still not reaching the real girl.

The very end

Let's break down what really happens without the meta-narrative. Strip away the red text, the witches, the catbox, the endless games, and you're left with something depressingly simple.

Yasu is a person suffering from severe trauma and dissociation, caught between identities she can't reconcile. She's in love with multiple people while being unable to live as one. Her life, her mind, and her heart have fractured completely.

Battler, (whether he realizes it or not) steps into that delusion and plays along. Instead of helping her face reality, accepts the fantasy. He flirts with it, indulges it, wraps himself in it. And when it's all over, he doesn't say goodbye to Yasu. He doesn't say, “I'm sorry for not recognizing your pain.” He doesn't even say her name.

“I dedicate this tale to my beloved witch Beatrice.”

Not to the girl behind the mask. Not to the human being who suffered and broke trying to keep up this illusion. To Beatrice, the fantasy. The witch. The delusion.

That's the final emotional note of Umineko: not redemption, not healing, not even clarity. Just the main character romanticizing the same illusion that destroyed everyone. Fans treat this line like it's beautiful, but it's really just the final betrayal. A hollow gesture to a dream that never existed.

The story is indeed a tragedy, but not the one it was meant to be.

2025-08-11 P.S.: After re-reading this, I came to the conclusion that the issue I have with Umineko does not lie with Umineko itself but with the author; to me, it seems like Ryukishi wanted to make a second Higurashi, but got bored or didn't know how to resolve the story halfway through. So instead of sending it to the abyss of unfinished works, he just changed the whole novel and continued writing a completely different work.